Until February 23 when the 22nd Winter Olympics end in Sochi, Russia, the Olympics competitions will hold many of us watching from the warmth and comfort of our living rooms. The training, courage, and endurance of these athletes cannot be captured or measured by fleeting moments on a television screen; nor measured even by the […]
Photo Credit : Anna MartynovaUntil February 23 when the 22nd Winter Olympics end in Sochi, Russia, the Olympics competitions will hold many of us watching from the warmth and comfort of our living rooms. The training, courage, and endurance of these athletes cannot be captured or measured by fleeting moments on a television screen; nor measured even by the medals they bring or do not bring home. Many Winter Olympic winners or losers are decided by fractions of seconds, the time it takes to type this one word may separate a gold medal from not even placing.
Some 2500 Winter Olympians are competing over the next two weeks, among them 25 New Englanders who grew up amidst the same snow covered mountains as the rest of us. Each athlete arrives with a unique story, no athlete, no matter how extraordinary his and her skill, will have gotten this far without the extraordinary support of family, friends, and most often, an entire community.
New England’s largest and most sparsely populated county, Aroostook County, Maine, is following a local hero: Russell Currier. His sport is biathlon, hugely popular in Europe, all but ignored here in America. A public supper hosted by his former high school in Caribou, Maine raised nearly $6000 to defray expenses for his parents to watch their son in his quest. Currier trained and reached world class skill at the pride of Aroostook: the Winter Sports Center. A crowd in downtown Caribou watched him compete Saturday, and no doubt Aroostook will again be glued to their TVs when he races this Thursday in the 20 km biathlon.
Few of the athletes reach the fame of Franconia, New Hampshire’s Bode Miller, whose individualism has attracted supporters and detractors, from one Olympiad to another.
Bode Miller and Maine local hero Seth Wescott, both trained at Maine’s Sugarloaf Mountain while at the famed Carrabassett Valley Academy.
As soon as these winter games end, these New England athletes, and who knows how many other potential champions who right now are perfecting their skills on skates, snowboards, skis, hockey rinks, ski jumps, luge runs, start again, their sights set on Korea, 2018.
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
